Ascend Yoga Studio

Ascending with Yoga

I grew up on airplanes. My dad was in the Air Force until just last year, so my entire childhood was traveling from place to place, meeting new people, and changing schools—sometimes three times in a year. Moving was my constant until high school, when my dad entered the Reserves and we actually stayed in one place for my entire high school experience (quite a change from the norm, and something I definitely wasn’t prepared for). After that, I spent college transitioning from apartment to apartment each semester, still transient, still on the move. When my husband and I met, he was a hiking/canyoneering junkie and I needed to find the outdoors. He introduced me to the grace (and challenges!) of nature, and we spent a lot of our times escaping into the mountains to hike, ski, and explore.

After a few years, one morning David took me up to Park City and refused to tell me what was going on (at 5:30 in the morning, even). We sat at a hotel, waiting, for about an hour, and then suddenly it became clear—we were going on a hot air balloon ride. We drove out to an open field and boarded onto a red and gold balloon with a smiley face grinning above us, etched into the inside of the balloon. And we ascended. Higher and higher. It was in that moment that I realized that life doesn’t get much better than this, to be able to look below at the world and see from horizon to horizon. To literally live in the atmosphere of our planet for even just a few moments, not touching the ground, ascending up and up and up, watching the sun rise. I had so many glimpses of this beauty all my life, but it was that moment that felt the most special. I was in open air, not enclosed by an airplane. The breeze was playing with my hair, I could reach out my hand over the basket and dangle in mid-air, and I felt like I could touch the clouds. This, this, is what life is. I have never been more in the moment than when I have been outside in nature. And being in the air? I believe that that was the most present moment of my life.

Yoga allows me to connect as intimately with my body as I can with nature. We are made of nature, after all. Like ascending into the air, yoga gives us that same uplifting of our spirits. It brings us ultimate peace and contentment as we work through the challenges it gives us within the safe space of the studio. Yoga is life changing, just as getting out in nature is.

Ascend Yoga Studio is my gift to you. It is a way to ascend and uplift, no matter your age or capacity or area of life. Come to seek greater understanding of your body. Come for any reason! Just come. And this studio will give you all the tools you need to live life more fully and to be more present.